


i, the sun

by canto



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, HR violations such as possessing someone because their loneliness is familiar to yours, Trans Elias Bouchard, feat. one mention of lonelyeyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29947941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canto/pseuds/canto
Summary: in truth, elias has long been claimed by the lonely before the institute's eyes set on him, and perhaps that was always going to be the beginning of his end.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9
Collections: TMA Villains Week 2021





	i, the sun

**Author's Note:**

> [as written for the TMA villains week. prompts used: identity/relationships]  
> i need to preface this by saying i'm notably a transgay. and also that it's not my fault when god made me she decided i could only write about the lonely and identity issues. btw grammar and time aren't real 
> 
> CWs for: paranoia, (briefly) misgendering, implied transphobia, and like... everything that comes with jonah-elias and og elias.

there's a very special misery in knowing your whole self was ripped away from you because jonah magnus deemed you insignificant enough that no one will ever notice. the best part is that he's of course right each and every time.   
the thing is, it didn't really settle in how fucked he was after the interview. if the human psyche is good at anything, it's denial. it got him far enough.

it's a month of working at the institute when he’s told james wright wants to see him. elias might've never had a job before, but he thinks it's fair to assume something about an initial performance review. that combination of words sounds good, anyway.

elias. how's your father doing? wright will open the conversation. 

elias leans back, smile of taut piano wire, and doesn't see him. what do you mean, sir? he says, because he doesn't understand what the right answer is, what his father could possibly want him to say to that. his eyes water, and he remembers to blink. 

to wright’s side, in the corner, is a potted plant. perfectly green. god, it's so fucking generic.

elias refocuses on the calendar stuck on august of 1992. he’s fine, he will answer with the confidence of someone bullshitting their way through life. after a second he does add on that he actually hadn't heard from him recently. 

there's polite interest in wright’s voice. i'm sure that must come as a relief to you.

elias doesn't quite remember nodding, but when he wakes up the next morning, the sun is brighter in a way closer to blinding oneself rather than an overdone metaphor for better days.

  
  
  


james wright, jonah magnus, an assortment of names discarded before they ever saw the light of day, closes the curtains on today’s play of his choosing. he gives it a few days before continuing onto the next act.

each friday after work is the same friday. he’ll be at the nearest gas station where the cashier leans forward and calls him darling-babe-sweetheart and tells him how dangerous it is for pretty young girls like you to be out at night dressed like that, and you will laugh it off and tell him it's not that late, and pay for the cheapest alcohol you're too good for.  your footsteps will quicken into a staccato against the pavement until you're home, nothing was ever home, and certainly not the self-imposed isolation afforded only by wealth. and you lean on the coat hanger and you think magnus institute could never be as bad as him as this as then, that maybe it's for the better and you can pretend you're fine as long as you're you.  
the convenience of choosing victims already hounded by a paranoia so acute it burns is they never notice another pair of eyes. (—the woman next door is drafting a novel she will never finish. she forgot to feed her cat—) deny it, deny it, always deny it and it’ll still be there but you'll live with it because you're still too scared to do anything else. (—a virgin mary plastered next to a bookshelf to cover the stain that kept growing ever since her neighbour moved out. or was it a heart attack?—)  
and (james wright and) (jonah magnus and) elias bouchard could have never been any different, because for all the complexes he nurtured, superiority or whatnot, he is so,  _ so _ utterly predictable. (—acetone and lilies, choking on lilies and chlorine and ethanol and lilies and—)

it’s almost a shame he’ll have to go, james wright muses. 

an unorthodox reminder, but. he idly taps his wedding band against the desk, throws the beginnings of an enquiry into the watcher’s hold. as always, it comes back empty. that, too, painfully predictable. and, really, he can't even mind that much. after all, he never could've claimed he was with an avatar of the lonely for the company.  to be detached from one’s humanity for so long tends to come with a list of symptoms, and something would've had to have gone terribly wrong if he didn't exhibit at least a few.

  
  
  
  


_ serving the all-knowing as an elegy for the concept of meaningful relationships; it has to be one of his favourite ironies how captivating that self-imposed isolation is to those marked by the watcher. _

  
  
  


(1996, and elias burns his photo albums. he's choking on the smoke as it travels up, up into the whorls of the evening sky, and he tries to find meaning in forgetting what his old friends looked like. someone’s eyes burn brighter, then, right into his very being, right until the last photo is ash and dust.  
last breath, and elias does wish he had someone he could wish he said goodbye to, even if he knows so well he wouldn't.  
“give it enough time, and that wish does go away,” james advises him before moving the scalpel in. “i’m sorry you won't live to find that out yourself.”)

  
  



End file.
